Booby trap spam

So I was playing Ipwnj00 in a long PE vs US and he booby trapped every single point that he took.

Kind of a funny start where neither of us knew the other's army. I held off his AC rush long enough to get MP + rangers. I was doing all right but as soon as he had the points he started booby trapping every point on the map. I give him props for having the APM to pull it off. Eventually I had a bunch of veteran rifles and rangers, but to take an point I would have to lose at least half a squad, and even then he had tons of muni left for sector artillery.

I was very close to turning it around actually and it was a GG. But what is up with the free booby traps? And can you suggest creative counters to this for next time? Clearly I should have put more into vehicles, I was sitting on so much fuel, never even built a sherman.

When did you play him? I might have caused this, I might have played the same guy earlier on (late afternoon GMT on the 8th).

I was PE and he was US, I rushed an AC pushed him back, booby trapped the map. Fell back to my base to get away from paras and an M8. Then repeated the same thing when I got a marder to fend off his M8. He took a crazy amount of losses as I tried to distract him with small engagements when he was capping. Then when he got mad and charged my position I used sector arty. I slowly took back the map and he cried bullsh*t and left.

It can be easy to dodge them (click for your men to move past the point when you hear the click, and cap it from the other side), but doing this when other things are happening changes things. It then becomes a chore to take back points. Someone used this on me yesterday and I got owned by sector arty.

If you notice booby traps it means you wont have hertzers, jdpthr, double shrek squads, teller mines, falls or cloaked kettens to deal with. I might sound strange but armor doctrine for fast deployment of some really quick M8s and a quad might work well. (not sure how much damage a trap does to a capping M8)

yeah, it's pretty unfair how booby traps are free, yet in beta, fire-up will cost 5 munis. one other thing is, how do you deal with booby traps in buildings? i know it's not as bad for amis who don't depend on buildings as much, but damn, how'd you detect and avoid it?

You know, I think the moving backwards was what was getting me. Or maybe it was lag: it seemed like when I would retreat back, my units would die even 50 feet from the point.

I would have gone for the M8 cap if I could have, but I'd already gone infantry because of his initial AC spam. I didn't have the fuel at first, I should have bought more armor after I secured the high fuel point.

Another thought: you should be able to detect and remove booby traps with minesweepers. (Or can you? I never tried.) It's rather inane that you can see the booby trap being planted, know it's there, and have no way to remove it.

I almost always pick SE as doctrine when i'm playing PE. It's pretty cool. But booby trapping every point is pretty pointless. If your opponent knows you've picked SE, he'll be a lot more carefull. Not booby trapping some points might make him less cautious, resulting in even more fun for you when he does cap a trapped point. It's also great against ppl who try to cap points with multiple squads (or move in blobs) and if you have to fall back, you might be able to lure your opponent into your sector, so you can sector arty him. On Langres, that munitions point in the middle of the map is a very great sector to use sector arty on. I always try to get that sector and then move my troops a bit back and see if my opponents baits it

About the APM, it's not that hard to booby trap all points. Just click to cap, immediately followed by Y+shift-click on the same point again. Can be done real quick, and if you use control-groups, it becomes pretty easy with multiple squads as well.

It's easy when you know where it is, but when you have just pushed your opponent off the field, and you give separate capping orders to 3 or more squads you may not exactly know where to look when you hear the click. Something that requires no munitions, no command points to unlock, and very little time to set up should not be able to wipe out whole squads, especially when it is something that can not be ignored (you have to cap points), but rather must be activated, then dodged. Even with perfect micro the extra time it takes to capture territory all but erases the faster capping speed that is an important design feature of the Americans.

It's easy when you know where it is, but when you have just pushed your opponent off the field, and you give separate capping orders to 3 or more squads you may not exactly know where to look when you hear the click. Something that requires no munitions, no command points to unlock, and very little time to set up should not be able to wipe out whole squads, especially when it is something that can not be ignored (you have to cap points), but rather must be activated, then dodged. Even with perfect micro the extra time it takes to capture territory all but erases the faster capping speed that is an important design feature of the Americans.

Don't give orders to cap all points at the same time.

If you have routed the opponent send your squads towards the points you want to take. When a squad arrives at a point, select it and order it to cap a point and if you hear a click move them to the other side. Do this with all your squads at each point. This way you won't doubt where mines have been activated.

It's easy when you know where it is, but when you have just pushed your opponent off the field, and you give separate capping orders to 3 or more squads you may not exactly know where to look when you hear the click. Something that requires no munitions, no command points to unlock, and very little time to set up should not be able to wipe out whole squads, especially when it is something that can not be ignored (you have to cap points), but rather must be activated, then dodged. Even with perfect micro the extra time it takes to capture territory all but erases the faster capping speed that is an important design feature of the Americans.

Did you know that you can click on the warning on the left hand side of the screen and it will show you exactly where the trap is? Hell it even moves the camera for you and centers it right on the point where the trap is.

You have to really try hard at not paying any attention to lose an entire squad to a booby trap

If you have routed the opponent send your squads towards the points you want to take. When a squad arrives at a point, select it and order it to cap a point and if you hear a click move them to the other side. Do this with all your squads at each point. This way you won't doubt where mines have been activated.

I generally manage to avoid them with little or no casualties but I will reiterate my last point.

Even with perfect micro the extra time it takes to capture territory all but erases the faster capping speed that is an important design feature of the Americans.

QUOTE(craftics @ Nov 13 2008, 12:42 PM)

Did you know that you can click on the warning on the left hand side of the screen and it will show you exactly where the trap is? Hell it even moves the camera for you and centers it right on the point where the trap is.

You have to really try hard at not paying any attention to lose an entire squad to a booby trap

I should have figured that one out myself because I know that works for finding snipers. That will make things a little easier. But I still don't think it's right that a free ability, that costs nothing, requires little micro, and no command points should be capable of wreaking such havoc, whether that havoc be in terms of men lost, in lower level play, or time lost, in higher level play.

same thing works for sniper. clicking on the "Unit Sniped" icon will center it on the sniper, even if he moves. those things last a while. i've seen iaguz fire off a howitzer barrage at a sniper 30 seconds after his men retreated.

[quote name='Moaterboat' date='Nov 13 2008, 16:45 PM' post='5158266']It's easy when you know where it is, but when you have just pushed your opponent off the field, and you give separate capping orders to 3 or more squads you may not exactly know where to look when you hear the click. [/quote]

Try pressing the spacebar next time.

[quote]Something that requires no munitions, no command points to unlock, and very little time to set up should not be able to wipe out whole squads, especially when it is something that can not be ignored (you have to cap points), but rather must be activated, then dodged.[/quote]

It requires 2 command points, and with nearly every US player rifle-stalling, it takes a while to get those 2 points. The boobytrap from the Ketten isn't that great and much less of a problem.

[quoteEven with perfect micro the extra time it takes to capture territory all but erases the faster capping speed that is an important design feature of the Americans.[/quote]

It's a nice trade-off i think. Pg's cap at roughly half the speed of riflemen. Boobytraps slows it down, but riflemen are still faster when it comes to capping.

You can dodge grenades too, so I don't see how that is a valid argument. And it is still adds up to a lot of wasted time.

Apples to oranges.

You can't compare grenade use to booby traps. Grenades are aimed, can be used anywhere and at anytime provided you have the munitions. Not to mention, grenades don't initiate a global warning with a big red box saying GRENADE BEING THROWN!

Booby traps are entirely static, and once set, are essentially out of your control and it's up to your enemy to be dumb enough to sit there and take the losses (this is why they're "free")

There are a number of other indirect fire abilities that will incur just as much damage if not MORE than the free booby traps (and some of these don't even give you the nice loud click and big red warning box)

You can't compare grenade use to booby traps. Grenades are aimed, can be used anywhere and at anytime provided you have the munitions. Not to mention, grenades don't initiate a global warning with a big red box saying GRENADE BEING THROWN!

Booby traps are entirely static, and once set, are essentially out of your control and it's up to your enemy to be dumb enough to sit there and take the losses (this is why they're "free")

There are a number of other indirect fire abilities that will incur just as much damage if not MORE than the free booby traps (and some of these don't even give you the nice loud click and big red warning box)

Yes, booby traps are static, so are mines, WHICH AREN'T FREE.

Yes, booby traps can't be used anywhere, neither can the American Demo charge. And guess what, THAT'S NOT FREE EITHER.

Yes, booby traps give you a very noticeable warning. So does off map arty, and to a lesser degree, strafes, on map arty, and the V1. NONE OF WHICH ARE ANYWHERE CLOSE TO BEING FREE!

Don't get me wrong, I don't think booby traps are some sort of super awesome game breaking ability, I agree completely that they combine the worst parts of grenades, mines, demo charges, and arty, but there seems to be something fundamentally wrong about having the ability to kill enemy units with absolutely no cost and no risk. I don't think there is anything else in CoH that is like that.

I also don't like the argument that it only does damage to someone dumb enough to fall for it. Are you serious? The same could be said about any number of abilities, it's simply a matter of where you draw the line between "dumb" and simply not good enough. Are you dumb for running over a mine when you could have gotten minesweepers? Or not getting your mg squad out of the building before they eat a grenade?

The problem lies in the disparity of micro required. The PE player simply has to ask himself every once in a while if he has set a booby trap recently, if he forgets and gets wrapped up in something else he has lost nothing. The allied player has to be ready to stop whatever he is doing with a moments notice and give an order to avoid casualties.